"Takin' a pack an' runnin' away, are ya?" an old elf man calls from under the shadow of a great pine.
I smile and wave, hefting the load of giant pine needles higher on my back.
The old man chuckles hoarsely to himself. "I gotcha that time, that I did. Come by when you're done and help me unpack my load from the merchant."
I nod and keep walking.
It's been a couple months now since the trial, and the elves are starting to be a lot friendlier to me. It probably helps that I've been doing more than my mandatory community service. After the first week of glares and uneasy glances, I realized that just serving my sentence wasn't enough. I started looking around for other ways I could help. At first, the elves didn't want to talk to me, but after one or two started letting me do odd jobs for them for free, the rest of the community gradually started to soften. That old elf man was actually one of the first to let me do extra work for him.
Now, I'm pretty much the elves' errand boy. But it's worth it for the difference in how they treat me.
On my way to drop off the pine needles, I get a couple more requests for odd jobs for after I finish my community service for the day. I accept them all.
I reach the manufacturing grove and stop at Ellin's tree. She's standing at the door directing traffic as elves enter and exit, with most carrying something or other.
Her eyes land on me. "Ah, human boy. That's a good load you got there. Take that to the weavers."
I nod and step inside the tree's doorway. I walk forward through the natural wood passage, passing the ground level doors and heading to the tree's core. As I approach, a bright green glow fills the passageway.
I reach the hollow core. It looks like a round room with several passages branching off of it. The room is filled with dense green light, thick enough to obscure the passage on the opposite side of the room from view. Looking up, it's impossible to see the top of the room. All I see is endless green light. There is a top, of course—the top of the tree.
I grab one of the enchanted staves leaning against the wall and say, "Vyōd."
The staff starts to float upwards, and I quickly hold it horizontally and grab it with both arms. The first time I did this, I held it like a walking stick and ended up losing my grip ten feet in the air.
Now I usually sit on it, but the weavers are only on the second floor.
The staff floats above my head and keeps rising. My feet leave the floor as I hang from it. It's going kind of slow. I must have grabbed one with a weaker enchantment. That's alright. I like being able to control the speed.
"Ahbeed Vahzdur," I say. The staff starts rising quicker, and I see the second floor doorway approaching.
I hear a high-pitched laugh behind me. I turn my head. It's a young elf boy.
"Slowpoke!" he calls, flying past me and up the shaft, no staff needed.
I sigh. I know the elves think my ineptitude with magic is funny, but most of them don't make fun of it to my face.
You can't use magic? The old elder's face had wrinkled in confusion. Even a baby could use magic here. Don't you see how high the concentration is?
I had tried, many times, following the weird instructions of "somewhere in between swimming and dreaming", but I never got even a millimeter off the ground in the shaft. I guess Mariana wasn't kidding about putting my magic on hold till I got her a following.
Thankfully, I could still use enchanted items that used voice commands, since it was the items being magical, not me. They imported quite a few all-purpose enchanted staffs, so I'd been learning the various voice commands.
Apparently, the staff could understand most simple phrases, so you didn't actually need to memorize command phrases. The problem was that it only understood the Enrahg dialect, which was what they spoke in the country the staves came from. So for now, I'd just memorized the phrases I used most.
I've reached the second floor doorway. "Zdahb." The staff halts. "Vor Rurd." I float towards the door and into it several feet before I turn the staff off: "Di Ahgdi Veh Iid."
I fall the remaining foot or so towards the ground, staff in hand. I prop the staff against the wall by the entrance and walk down the passageway with my load of pine needles.
I walk into a large chamber filled with elves at various craft stations. One of them sees me and waves me over. She's halfway done weaving a basket out of pine needles and mana fibres. Or it could be armor. It's hard to tell.
I plop my load of pine needles down next to her and turn to go gather another load, when she calls after me,
"The Elder of Orphus is asking for you to stop work early and go see him."
"Oh, alright. I'll head straight there." I'd learned that the grey-haired elder represented the God of Wisdom, Orphus. In many ways, he could be considered the leader of the elf community.
I walked through the corridor and floated back down the core of the tree with the staff. I left the staff where I found it and headed toward the central clearing where I'd been tried months earlier. Thankfully, they'd managed to reattach Meg's branch. That's why my sentence was shortened to four months.
The trees ringing the clearing contained important community facilities. There was a medical tree, an education tree, even a hotel tree. It had some really nice rooms near the top for visiting dignitaries. I had a simple room on the second floor. It was a huge improvement from the locked cellar I'd been in at first.
I headed toward the education tree. Most people just called it the Kirvos tree, after the grey-haired elder. He spent so much time there that he'd actually moved into a study room at the top so he wouldn't have to walk back home every day. Most elves lived in residential trees in the outer ring of the giant pines, organized by families. I'd been in quite a few homes to help with chores.
The elf at the entrance of the tree nodded at me as I went inside. I headed straight to the core and grabbed an enchanted staff. I spoke the command word for 'float' and hopped onto the staff hanging in the air. I held on tight as it floated upward with me sitting on it. I definitely don't want to fall this time.
I'm heading to the top of the tree.